One of these days I gave up on taking a plane to New York. In fact, early January, years ago, I give up on taking a plane to New York. As sure as every beginning of December I plan to take it in January. NRF. Federação Nacional de Varejo. The great global retail fair.
It is school holiday time and I always end up prioritizing family, sun and heat. But that doesn't stop me from reading, see and hear the trends that arrive fresh from the Big Apple. This year, the podcast #boravarejo by Alfredo Soares with Mariano Gomide caught my attention a lot, co-CEO of Vtex. The guy gave a class on entrepreneurship, retail, management and e-commerce in 40 min. And about NY.
But I ended up settling on a point. That aligns with the new moment of my company, especially post-pandemic. Mariano spoke about the importance of brands having some form of direct communication with their audience, with your base. In recent years, we are monitoring the increase in the cost of advertising on big techs, especially Google and Meta. An increasingly challenging task for digital marketers is to generate leads on these large communication platforms. It is difficult to convert in the organic, but even more in the paid.
In parallel, the algorithms of social networks have evolved a lot in this same period and it is a fact that the networks deliver less and less content to the brand's followers. Also is, therefore, increasingly difficult to generate engagement. Mariano spoke about the imperative need for brands to communicate directly with their consumers, without intermediaries. The others present in the studio joined in. They also emphasized the importance of the frequency of communication.
There are basically three ways for a company to communicate directly with its audience. Telephone, direct message, email. I'm not going to waste time with the phone that, it is still widely used and moderately effective for telemarketing, certainly does not lend itself to such frequent yet non-invasive communication. Yes, the company needs to communicate several times a week, mas sem invadir/incomodar seu lead/cliente/prospect.
We then move on to the direct messages. SMS, WhatsApp and direct messages on social media. If WhatsApp established itself during the pandemic as a direct sales channel, and it is indeed surprising the effectiveness of this channel for the moment of purchase (this was greatly emphasized by Alfredo Soares after NRF in São Paulo), he certainly is not suitable for the day-to-day communication between the brand and its consumer. It also becomes invasive in this way.
We have arrived at the ugly duckling of digital communication, the "sukita uncle" of the internet, the old man, slow and sluggish email. Deception. Email never died; and email marketing not only did not die with it but grew significantly alongside the growth of e-commerce and this post-pandemic world. He is the perfect bridge that your company may not be taking. Of all the means above, it is the cheapest. But more than that, it is the most effective.
With the evolution of digital marketing automation, today it is possible to create relationship rules with a database that will communicate according to consumer behavior. And the big deal (pardon the pun) is that email is the central communication, but it is also automated with SMS and WhatsApp. Everything integrated.
If your website visitor abandons the shopping cart, they receive an email, if he visits your store, receives a welcome email. On your birthday? An email. He bought? How about a WhatsApp with cashback? If he clicked on the site's blog, who knows an email with more content? Ready, a direct communication is established between brand and audience. She does not depend on an algorithm, but from the brand's own work. She represents the very vehicle of the brand. Also through it, the company can exponentially increase its database, enriching it and thus generating even more accurate automations.
Email marketing remains the highest "ROI" (return on investment) of digital in the US and UK, and here in Brazil one of the most effective media for e-commerce, according to specialists like Rafael Kiso.
And your company? Do you already use this bridge or are you still at the mercy of the turbulent waters of the powerful big techs?
